When I was on my way back to my village, 3 hours into my bus ride, I realized the key to my house was in my ever-elusive backpack. So the rest of the way I patched up a plan: 1. ask tata for spare key 2.see if i can shove one small child inside the house through gap over my door to open side door from within 3.somehow break lock.
I get to house and tata says the spare key to my house is at the school in a locked box. The key to the locked box is with a man named Suli who is cutting sugarcane somewhere near Rakiraki. I looked around for a small child, and while Sinu was willing and able, the crack above my door seemed to have shrunk, and a small baby would be the only thing that would fit. And it would probably just rock back and forth and cry, not open the door from within. Unhelpful. So up came Sisa with a file, and after about 30 minutes, he sawed that lock right off.
I am still putting the pieces all back together, but things have improved a lot.
Also. Do I dare say I love not having a computer? My God, my life is so simple. I just whittle away the evenings in the hammock reading. No longer frantic when and if the generator comes on, not having the self control not to watch a show (just like how i don't have the self control not to buy ice cream in town -- when will i get the opportunity again? perhaps not for awhile). But electronics and Fiji have always been incongruous. Why follow a path that meets so much resistance.
A few days after going through the motions I went outside with my cane knife and started whacking at weeds. I went to a piece of land i often stare at from my window, thinking to myself, that could make a good gardening plot.
The next day I got out the pitchfork and went at it again. I upturned the soil and threw it around, loosening it bit by bit.
The neighbor boys soon came to help me. God they're so sweet. Sisa, the same brother who chopped my lock off, climbed into the lemon tree and started hacking the branches with a cane knife, so that my new garden would get more direct sunlight. Huge branches came crashing down. Avi and his brother Dile got their pitchforks and knives and helped me turn the soil over better. I had to snap myself out of just watching them work. They are so adept with knives. Maybe there is sense in giving the little kids knives to play with. Little farmers in training. They just sweep the grass away like a leisurely frisbee toss. And then we came to roots. Some roots as thick as a few cans of soda. With one whack they cut the thing clear through, and then would delicately lift it like a piece of spaghetti. Meanwhile, I would be wrestling with it, clutching with both hands and jumping backward trying to elevate it.
Planting starts tomorrow.
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Sunday, November 7, 2010
america a monet?
Today I sat in the Fiji US Embassy waiting for someone to talk to about getting a new passport. I sat in one of many chairs that were spaced as if the office were an airplane. Would someone soon offer me peanuts? In front of me were three framed photographs -- Obama, Hillary, and Biden. Smiley, happy. On the walls were pictures from America. A crowded street, a park, and the beginning construction of the Capitol.
Awww.
Rosy from afar, I know. but i hope i never take America for granted ever again. One thing I love about Peace Corps is that it makes you appreciate things so much. Cheese is a delicacy. Berries, easy transportation, bagels, parks, environmentalists, pizza, political activism, tortilla chips, fast internet, sports, refried beans, hummus. Watching people recreate for the sake of recreation. Libraries, book stores, coffee shops. Even simply sitting in a quiet house reading a book.
Tomorrow, back to the village, and I get to leave big bad Suva behind me.
Awww.
Rosy from afar, I know. but i hope i never take America for granted ever again. One thing I love about Peace Corps is that it makes you appreciate things so much. Cheese is a delicacy. Berries, easy transportation, bagels, parks, environmentalists, pizza, political activism, tortilla chips, fast internet, sports, refried beans, hummus. Watching people recreate for the sake of recreation. Libraries, book stores, coffee shops. Even simply sitting in a quiet house reading a book.
Tomorrow, back to the village, and I get to leave big bad Suva behind me.
Friday, November 5, 2010
yep, It's a wild world.
Today, honesty.
Yesterday my backpack was stolen from beside my chair at an internet café in Suva. I was talking to my sister on Skype, straining to hear her over the loud bustle and even covering my eyes at times to better concentrate on her words, perhaps thinking by shutting out one sense I would amplify another. I sat calm and motionless as someone reached down to my feet and grabbed my bag containing my computer, iPod, wallet, passport, cash, and walked out the back door. They may as well have taken the chair from under me, watching callously as I crashed to the floor.
I don’t unleash wrath very often. I’m pretty subdued, calm. I was always that kid on the soccer field that tried to break up fights instead of start them. But I unleashed some wrath in that internet café, some pretty good wrath, I think. So lost and confused, at 24 in a strange country that I had known so well, that I had grown to love and trust, that suddenly turned its back on me. That ripped the rug from under me. And this time, as I cursed through the aisles of the internet café, it was the kind-hearted employee who calmed me down, who spoke to me gently, who directed me to the nearest police post.
I don’t know what to say. It’s just stuff. Yes. But I can’t seem to shake the sad disappointment out of me this time. Will I ever trust this place again?
I’ve been to hell and back in this country so many times. It’s just so intense. Culture shock, burnout, isolation, cyclones, floods, homesickness. Blah blah blah. I have had to learn to cope with bad days alone in a house of sticks using nothing but clumsy, newly invented tools. Hell, I learned the guitar. I’ve made up games. I’ve written 850 pages in my journal. I’ve pretty much memorized a book I was sent about mindfulness, gratitude, and peace. All for what? To keep myself sane, to keep myself here, to fulfill a commitment I made. A commitment that asks us to draw a sunset with 3 crayons, two blue and one green. That asks us to hike with a limp, and eat soup with a fork. But sometimes the stretch is too much, and I break a little bit. Sometimes I imagine it as building muscle as I break and re-form. But sometimes it feels like an irreversible strain as I become impatient and absolutely humorless, someone that I don’t know and don’t particularly like.
And sometimes I wake up feeling guilty I am not doing enough. I don’t have hours. I don’t have a separation between work and home. I just am. I wake up slowly with 3 cups of coffee as I do crossword puzzles or read about politics of faraway lands. As my cat jumps into my lap and purrs, I think, man Lisa, you could do more. You could start your day earlier. You could be taking on another project. Just try harder.
I don’t claim to be doing anything more noble than anyone else in this world. I have kept myself alive on a tiny island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean for a long time now, and yes, I’m damn proud of that. And up to this point, I have fallen, but have always managed to pick myself up and dust myself off. I don’t think what I do is anything extraordinary, and anyone else in my position would probably do a better job than me. It is easy to make yourself into a martyr as a Peace Corps Volunteer. Who can invalidate your actions? It is easy to make yourself into a martyr on a blog. Who can invalidate your claim? You are your own judge. And what a dizzyingly terrifying role that becomes. Because who are you, who am I, who are any of us to judge what we do.
But you know, I don’t go around robbing people. I don’t wake up plotting crime. I don’t cause harm to anybody, at least not intentionally. But some do. Some have, some do, some will. As I have entered a sometimes masochistic search for truth and certainty, trying to figure out what in this world I can believe in, what I can trust, all the while messing up myself sometimes but dammit trying to be a good person, trying not to hurt anyone and trying to solidify my moral backbone and build a foundation upon which to live the rest of my life, there are and will always be bad people out there countervailing the good.
Do they balance out to static? Is the world just supposed to be stuck in this equilibrium?
Luckily I know more of Fiji than Suva. I have so many positive impressions of this place. And I know that, though it's hard to picture now in my foggy visions of berries and cereal aisles and national parks, there are bad people in America too.
Eh. I usually try to end on a positive note with this thing. But maybe sometimes it's just not supposed to end on a positive note. Like the world, maybe today I could just fade to static.
Yesterday my backpack was stolen from beside my chair at an internet café in Suva. I was talking to my sister on Skype, straining to hear her over the loud bustle and even covering my eyes at times to better concentrate on her words, perhaps thinking by shutting out one sense I would amplify another. I sat calm and motionless as someone reached down to my feet and grabbed my bag containing my computer, iPod, wallet, passport, cash, and walked out the back door. They may as well have taken the chair from under me, watching callously as I crashed to the floor.
I don’t unleash wrath very often. I’m pretty subdued, calm. I was always that kid on the soccer field that tried to break up fights instead of start them. But I unleashed some wrath in that internet café, some pretty good wrath, I think. So lost and confused, at 24 in a strange country that I had known so well, that I had grown to love and trust, that suddenly turned its back on me. That ripped the rug from under me. And this time, as I cursed through the aisles of the internet café, it was the kind-hearted employee who calmed me down, who spoke to me gently, who directed me to the nearest police post.
I don’t know what to say. It’s just stuff. Yes. But I can’t seem to shake the sad disappointment out of me this time. Will I ever trust this place again?
I’ve been to hell and back in this country so many times. It’s just so intense. Culture shock, burnout, isolation, cyclones, floods, homesickness. Blah blah blah. I have had to learn to cope with bad days alone in a house of sticks using nothing but clumsy, newly invented tools. Hell, I learned the guitar. I’ve made up games. I’ve written 850 pages in my journal. I’ve pretty much memorized a book I was sent about mindfulness, gratitude, and peace. All for what? To keep myself sane, to keep myself here, to fulfill a commitment I made. A commitment that asks us to draw a sunset with 3 crayons, two blue and one green. That asks us to hike with a limp, and eat soup with a fork. But sometimes the stretch is too much, and I break a little bit. Sometimes I imagine it as building muscle as I break and re-form. But sometimes it feels like an irreversible strain as I become impatient and absolutely humorless, someone that I don’t know and don’t particularly like.
And sometimes I wake up feeling guilty I am not doing enough. I don’t have hours. I don’t have a separation between work and home. I just am. I wake up slowly with 3 cups of coffee as I do crossword puzzles or read about politics of faraway lands. As my cat jumps into my lap and purrs, I think, man Lisa, you could do more. You could start your day earlier. You could be taking on another project. Just try harder.
I don’t claim to be doing anything more noble than anyone else in this world. I have kept myself alive on a tiny island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean for a long time now, and yes, I’m damn proud of that. And up to this point, I have fallen, but have always managed to pick myself up and dust myself off. I don’t think what I do is anything extraordinary, and anyone else in my position would probably do a better job than me. It is easy to make yourself into a martyr as a Peace Corps Volunteer. Who can invalidate your actions? It is easy to make yourself into a martyr on a blog. Who can invalidate your claim? You are your own judge. And what a dizzyingly terrifying role that becomes. Because who are you, who am I, who are any of us to judge what we do.
But you know, I don’t go around robbing people. I don’t wake up plotting crime. I don’t cause harm to anybody, at least not intentionally. But some do. Some have, some do, some will. As I have entered a sometimes masochistic search for truth and certainty, trying to figure out what in this world I can believe in, what I can trust, all the while messing up myself sometimes but dammit trying to be a good person, trying not to hurt anyone and trying to solidify my moral backbone and build a foundation upon which to live the rest of my life, there are and will always be bad people out there countervailing the good.
Do they balance out to static? Is the world just supposed to be stuck in this equilibrium?
Luckily I know more of Fiji than Suva. I have so many positive impressions of this place. And I know that, though it's hard to picture now in my foggy visions of berries and cereal aisles and national parks, there are bad people in America too.
Eh. I usually try to end on a positive note with this thing. But maybe sometimes it's just not supposed to end on a positive note. Like the world, maybe today I could just fade to static.
Thursday, September 16, 2010
a trip to the doctor.
*disclaimer: my English has gotten bad. My sister tells me this in our gchat conversations. That's not English, Lisa, she tells me. Oh yeah, I reply. But the strange thing is that it's not like my Fijian is improving all that much. Mysterious, I know, and perhaps another conversation for another time.
And so it begins. One simple trip to the hospital, and I return x-rayed and fine, but having learned so much more than why my foot hurts.
My feet are flat (thanks DAD), and apparently walking miles upon miles in Chacos aren't good for them. But there are so many rivers to cross! Running shoes are just impractical. So after several months of the same pain in the same place, I decided to get it checked out.
So I go to the hospital in Suva, which i have never been to before. Actually, I haven't been to a hospital since I was getting the last bits of my medical clearance taken care of back in America for my Peace Corps application. I walk inside, and, my God, it's like I've been transported somewhere else. It is so clean i could make a sandwich on the tiles I am standing upon. The lights! The shiny bins! The organization and order! The absolute lack of chaos! Everything in its right place. And that is just the beginning.
i get really cold in the waiting room. The air conditioning is so uncomfortable and unnecessary. I wait, wait, wait, and then remember, oh yes, I'm still in Fiji, because there is plenty waiting. But I am too distracted looking at people walking in straight lines and making directed, calculated movements that I don't care. There are manicured and meticulous parents wearing logos from Fijian companies sitting next to their groomed and well-behaved children who occasionally cough and flail in their seats. Everyone is wearing shoes, and polished shoes, at that. One Indo-Fijian female doctor keeps walking past with the clickety clack of heels. Heels! I stare, I smile, and I look down at my own calloused brown feet with splatters of white paint from a mural project we are doing at the school. I am slowly learning what stepping away from 16 months of rapid change, so rapid new limbs practically sprout overnight, feels like. In the thick of it, one day blends into the next and life just seems normal, static, ho hum. But when you're removed from it, taken out of your familiar surroundings and plopped into a new place, you get it. I was starting to slowly get it. Finally, my name is called.
I walk into the x-ray room and the whirring of the machine, the faint light emanating from its center, the sheer monstrosity of that piece of science sitting in that dark room, are all so remarkable I want to just stand and gaze. I may as well have been looking at a spaceship. But then I remember I need to walk up to the machine so that I can get my x-ray. I get to step closer! I actually get to sit on the thing!
We take pictures of my foot, and I put back on my Chacos that have caused all this mess in the first place. I go back to sit in my chair, and this time I take a seat next to the television, the moving pictures with sounds. I watch advertisements that I recognize from the radio, but now have faces and movement to go along with them. I didn't realize there was local news in Fiji, but it reminds me of action 7 news or the like from Albuquerque. Local people, talking about sports and weather and happenings. How fun.
I see the doctor, he tells me my foot is not broken (I had an idea that was the case) but that there is a tendon issue there, perhaps. As he pokes and prods my foot I am suddenly embarrassed by how weathered and beaten my feet look. Against the cool white tile, away from the hard village ground and brown woven mats, they look foreign and strange. Are these really my feet?
I get back to the waiting room and wait to reconcile the bill (thanks America!). I want to stay longer, just to observe this new amazing place, but I go, because I am meeting a friend, and I need food, and wow, had 2.5 hours really just gone by? I remember hospitals in America, and I think of my dad, who gets to work inside one every day. How fascinating.
Isa. A sneak peek at how hard readjustment is going to be. Or, how exciting? Like seeing with new eyeballs? We shall see.
And so it begins. One simple trip to the hospital, and I return x-rayed and fine, but having learned so much more than why my foot hurts.
My feet are flat (thanks DAD), and apparently walking miles upon miles in Chacos aren't good for them. But there are so many rivers to cross! Running shoes are just impractical. So after several months of the same pain in the same place, I decided to get it checked out.
So I go to the hospital in Suva, which i have never been to before. Actually, I haven't been to a hospital since I was getting the last bits of my medical clearance taken care of back in America for my Peace Corps application. I walk inside, and, my God, it's like I've been transported somewhere else. It is so clean i could make a sandwich on the tiles I am standing upon. The lights! The shiny bins! The organization and order! The absolute lack of chaos! Everything in its right place. And that is just the beginning.
i get really cold in the waiting room. The air conditioning is so uncomfortable and unnecessary. I wait, wait, wait, and then remember, oh yes, I'm still in Fiji, because there is plenty waiting. But I am too distracted looking at people walking in straight lines and making directed, calculated movements that I don't care. There are manicured and meticulous parents wearing logos from Fijian companies sitting next to their groomed and well-behaved children who occasionally cough and flail in their seats. Everyone is wearing shoes, and polished shoes, at that. One Indo-Fijian female doctor keeps walking past with the clickety clack of heels. Heels! I stare, I smile, and I look down at my own calloused brown feet with splatters of white paint from a mural project we are doing at the school. I am slowly learning what stepping away from 16 months of rapid change, so rapid new limbs practically sprout overnight, feels like. In the thick of it, one day blends into the next and life just seems normal, static, ho hum. But when you're removed from it, taken out of your familiar surroundings and plopped into a new place, you get it. I was starting to slowly get it. Finally, my name is called.
I walk into the x-ray room and the whirring of the machine, the faint light emanating from its center, the sheer monstrosity of that piece of science sitting in that dark room, are all so remarkable I want to just stand and gaze. I may as well have been looking at a spaceship. But then I remember I need to walk up to the machine so that I can get my x-ray. I get to step closer! I actually get to sit on the thing!
We take pictures of my foot, and I put back on my Chacos that have caused all this mess in the first place. I go back to sit in my chair, and this time I take a seat next to the television, the moving pictures with sounds. I watch advertisements that I recognize from the radio, but now have faces and movement to go along with them. I didn't realize there was local news in Fiji, but it reminds me of action 7 news or the like from Albuquerque. Local people, talking about sports and weather and happenings. How fun.
I see the doctor, he tells me my foot is not broken (I had an idea that was the case) but that there is a tendon issue there, perhaps. As he pokes and prods my foot I am suddenly embarrassed by how weathered and beaten my feet look. Against the cool white tile, away from the hard village ground and brown woven mats, they look foreign and strange. Are these really my feet?
I get back to the waiting room and wait to reconcile the bill (thanks America!). I want to stay longer, just to observe this new amazing place, but I go, because I am meeting a friend, and I need food, and wow, had 2.5 hours really just gone by? I remember hospitals in America, and I think of my dad, who gets to work inside one every day. How fascinating.
Isa. A sneak peek at how hard readjustment is going to be. Or, how exciting? Like seeing with new eyeballs? We shall see.
Friday, August 13, 2010
vatu-i-ra.
I have to mention this place because it was really extraordinary. Especially because recently I've become so rutted in the same sights and sounds and smells of Fiji -- this place was so different!
Eight of us went. We rode a boat for 2.5 hours to Vatu-i-ra Island -- "the bird island." They did not lie about the birds. I was so overwhelmed with the odor of bird $@&* initially that I ran across to the upwind side, thinking my lord, what was I thinking to come all the way here, this is insanity. But then I looked up and nearly collapsed. Hundreds of birds, all frozen in place by the wind. I laid down for over an hour just staring. There they were, gliding, not moving a muscle; there i was, watching, not moving a muscle. We were both flaunting our mortality as if to say, yes, we are so evolutionarily adept, we have so much time on this earth, that we will spend the next several hours ending up no farther from where started. I felt guilty being the lone observer, thinking of ornithologists around the world that would be mesmerized by what I was looking at. Hell, even non-ornithologists would be mesmerized.
Soon Kara joined me, and we proceeded to name all the different species of birds. There were the "batmans," the "ladybugs," "white stripes," "all blacks," etc etc. We got pooped on, to be sure. But somehow, it was worth it.
We camped on the beach, just us and the birds, and I made sure to wake right before 6 so I could race to the top of the small hill on the island to watch the sunrise.
I want to go back.
(Pictures: top, view of the shore from the top of a large rock. middle, birds at sunrise. bottom, view of entire island at sunrise with our boat on the left)
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
this'n'that.
My latest efforts. My wonderful village carpenter and I put together this super cool stove using a wood mold and cement, sawdust, and sand. It's about 1 foot by 1 foot by 1 foot. We used a manual that was put together by another PCV, and I added a little somethin' extra to the top (using extra tiles lying around the village). An attempt at infusing my surroundings with some kind of creative energy and spunk. Or something. The stoves are cool because they require less firewood and emit less smoke. And what I love is that they are relatively cheap (10 USD per stove, more or less) and use locally available materials and carpentry talent. So, we'll see how this goes. I gave the first one to nana and she seems to be pretty happy with it. When nana's happy, I'm happy.
I thought about water fountains the other day for the first time in over a year. Wow, water, cold clean water to boot, at the press of a button, in a convenient place. I mean, I guess there are water fountains here sometimes, like accidental ones, when big cane trucks run over the exposed PVC pipe in the road. That doesn't count!
At the end of the day, I have started writing down both something i'm grateful for and also the cutest part of the day. I'm really liking it. Yesterday I couldn't choose, so I wrote down all 5. And without consciously thinking about them, I would've never thought to put them in my journal, and would've likely forgotten about them quickly. Things like nana and I running around the yard together, hollering, collecting my ibes and clothes off the line when it started raining. Or when the new 6 puppies from next door came and visited me while I was making a new cover for my compost, so I stopped to pet them. Or when the fish truck came into the village to sell fish, and I told nana I didn't want fish today, and she said ok, and then she bought me a fish anyway for my lunch. Or when tata came over and asked if I could get a new "globe" because my "globe" seemed to be weighing down the generator. Little things, yes. But it's good to remember these little things.
The finality of this experience is starting to sink in!
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
one letter.
To my dearest village,
I am writing today not only because it is clear to me, after a year, that you love letters. In fact, I think you have asked me to write close to a dozen letters on your behalf, asking for this or that or the other thing. And I have written some, but I also have not written others. You will probably still ask me to write some when I get back to you this afternoon. But that is not the point today. Today, I am writing a letter not on your behalf, but to you.
I am sure you think I am very strange. Just yesterday I was walking away from you at 5 o'clock, heading for my friend Kara's village to help celebrate her birthday. I was walking, because I love to walk. The bus went by, and I did not get on. How strange! I kept walking stubbornly along the road, as the sun was setting, away from you. Why was I not preparing the kerosene lantern, taking my bath, and starting to prepare dinner? I know how this must seem, this aimless walking I sometimes do, to either nowhere in particular, or to some far-off destination at an odd hour! I am not sure I will ever be able to explain it, but I want you to know, that I know to you it is very odd.
Remember when I threw my cat into my hamper and rode the carrier to meet two other Peace Corps Volunteers to go to the other side of the island to get our cats spayed? That was a long ways to go in one day to cut open a cat and remove the part of it that makes babies. Why would I spend time and energy and money doing such a thing? When I came back, Papukeni was very groggy and was sleeping on my floormat. She had a bright purple splotch surrounding a big scar on her bum, and your children gathered at my doorstep to stare at her. Just this morning she was running around and playing! Why is she now so sad! And so purple! You see, I didn't want her to have babies because I wanted her to stay healthy and also, when her babies have babies, and those babies have babies, you will be squirming with cats! That would be too many cats. You know, like how you have too many dogs right now, and the female dogs look droopy and tired all the time because they have been having too many babies. I wanted to save Papukeni from this same fate.
You also must know how very much I respect your ways, traditions, and culture. I feel lucky to be able to live within your limits, even though sometimes I appear to not want anything to do with you. I need some space sometimes, some privacy. This is very different, and I know how odd this must seem to you! But I love being completely immersed in your events during the day, only to be able to sit down and retreat in the evenings, sitting in my chair by the window, reading a book or writing or playing the guitar.
Reading, in fact, is one thing I do most of the time you think I am sleeping. I have read so many books in my house, accounts of Sudanese diaspora, of a time-travelling man, of a murder mystery taking place in New Mexico, of a family in America trying to grow their own food for a whole year (which you do, and have done, for quite a long time). You see, sometimes I like to read to take me to another place. Not out of disrespect to you, but as some sort of respite. Entertainment. To see how another person sees the world. Out of curiosity. Out of a desire to know and learn more.
I know this may be hard to believe, but I'm not used to wearing skirts! This is hilarious, I know, because have you seen me in nothing but skirts! Believe it or not, most people I know in America have never seen me in a skirt. How odd! And when you sometimes see me running (again, aimlessly! Where am I going to so rapidly?) along the road in the early mornings, in a skirt, it feels very strange to me! In America, I only ran in shorts. I never walked, let alone ran and trained, in skirts.
I hope that you like having me, because i very much like being a part of you. I am sorry I am not Fijian, and will never be, and that I behave oddly sometimes. But I have enjoyed learning about Fiji, and have also enjoyed teaching you about America through my sometimes eccentric behavior and baked goods and music. I am sorry I am not as good a teacher to you as you have been to me, and know that I am trying, and that I want only good things for you and your future.
Sincerely,
Lisa
I am writing today not only because it is clear to me, after a year, that you love letters. In fact, I think you have asked me to write close to a dozen letters on your behalf, asking for this or that or the other thing. And I have written some, but I also have not written others. You will probably still ask me to write some when I get back to you this afternoon. But that is not the point today. Today, I am writing a letter not on your behalf, but to you.
I am sure you think I am very strange. Just yesterday I was walking away from you at 5 o'clock, heading for my friend Kara's village to help celebrate her birthday. I was walking, because I love to walk. The bus went by, and I did not get on. How strange! I kept walking stubbornly along the road, as the sun was setting, away from you. Why was I not preparing the kerosene lantern, taking my bath, and starting to prepare dinner? I know how this must seem, this aimless walking I sometimes do, to either nowhere in particular, or to some far-off destination at an odd hour! I am not sure I will ever be able to explain it, but I want you to know, that I know to you it is very odd.
Remember when I threw my cat into my hamper and rode the carrier to meet two other Peace Corps Volunteers to go to the other side of the island to get our cats spayed? That was a long ways to go in one day to cut open a cat and remove the part of it that makes babies. Why would I spend time and energy and money doing such a thing? When I came back, Papukeni was very groggy and was sleeping on my floormat. She had a bright purple splotch surrounding a big scar on her bum, and your children gathered at my doorstep to stare at her. Just this morning she was running around and playing! Why is she now so sad! And so purple! You see, I didn't want her to have babies because I wanted her to stay healthy and also, when her babies have babies, and those babies have babies, you will be squirming with cats! That would be too many cats. You know, like how you have too many dogs right now, and the female dogs look droopy and tired all the time because they have been having too many babies. I wanted to save Papukeni from this same fate.
You also must know how very much I respect your ways, traditions, and culture. I feel lucky to be able to live within your limits, even though sometimes I appear to not want anything to do with you. I need some space sometimes, some privacy. This is very different, and I know how odd this must seem to you! But I love being completely immersed in your events during the day, only to be able to sit down and retreat in the evenings, sitting in my chair by the window, reading a book or writing or playing the guitar.
Reading, in fact, is one thing I do most of the time you think I am sleeping. I have read so many books in my house, accounts of Sudanese diaspora, of a time-travelling man, of a murder mystery taking place in New Mexico, of a family in America trying to grow their own food for a whole year (which you do, and have done, for quite a long time). You see, sometimes I like to read to take me to another place. Not out of disrespect to you, but as some sort of respite. Entertainment. To see how another person sees the world. Out of curiosity. Out of a desire to know and learn more.
I know this may be hard to believe, but I'm not used to wearing skirts! This is hilarious, I know, because have you seen me in nothing but skirts! Believe it or not, most people I know in America have never seen me in a skirt. How odd! And when you sometimes see me running (again, aimlessly! Where am I going to so rapidly?) along the road in the early mornings, in a skirt, it feels very strange to me! In America, I only ran in shorts. I never walked, let alone ran and trained, in skirts.
I hope that you like having me, because i very much like being a part of you. I am sorry I am not Fijian, and will never be, and that I behave oddly sometimes. But I have enjoyed learning about Fiji, and have also enjoyed teaching you about America through my sometimes eccentric behavior and baked goods and music. I am sorry I am not as good a teacher to you as you have been to me, and know that I am trying, and that I want only good things for you and your future.
Sincerely,
Lisa
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